Through the Eyes of an English Rose
by Dreamless Midnights
Summary: She knew she was playing with fire and yet, it still surprised her she got burned. Because underneath it all, she was still the pretty child tired of happy ever afters avoiding her. Fleeting moments from the life of Jessamine Lovelace told in a series of one-shots.


**A/N: Woohoo! First author's note! Soo excited! This is my first fic, but I don't really want people to go easy on me or anything Xd Feedback, good or not, is always welcomed :)**

**Basically, it's just going to be a couple of one shots about Jessamine's life. I know this one is kinda angsty, but I plan to make some happier ones. After all, I am trying to write about the girl's life, and there is supposed to be ups and downs.**

**oh...and special thanks to Not Enough Answers, who was kind enough to be one of my first readers and to encourage me ;)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Jessamine stared blankly at the cold, grey walls of her cell, where droplets of an unknown, vile liquid slid down, as slugs racing each others. The crushed, broken ring Nate -she still clung to the privilege of calling him in a way only Tessa could- gave her was still on the ground, where scattered pieces of diamond laid. Of _fake _diamond. She chocked down a sob, and pressed the scratchy blanket closer to her frozen body. Her puffy eyes where burning, and for once, she was glad there was no mirror in the room. She might look dreadful, but at least she couldn't see it.

...

Was she even supposed to care about that? She was surprised at how vain she was: she was in the silent city, with ghosts whispering their lamentations in her ears, Charlotte was still not here to get her out, her palms were blood-stained and sticky from holding the Mortal Sword, and all she cared about was her _looks_? It was almost amusing.

...

He always complimented her looks.

...

He was also dead.

...

The words felt empty. Hollowness had quickly replaced dread after Nathaniel's death.

She had always considered herself as the cunning, tricky one. She was the one turning people into puppets before tossing them aside. She was the one who taunted others, tampered with their feelings and found delight from the hurt in their eyes and their trembling lips. _She _deceived, _she _fooled, _she _betrayed, _she _manipulated. These things didn't - couldn't - happen to her.

But his dazzling smile shone too bright, and his passionate words lulled her into an utopian world where their love existed. Nathaniel Gray had achieved the unachievable, and made her heartbeat quicken, her cheeks flush, her eyes brighten. His eyes held the sky, and she could taste heaven when she stared into them. His light had blinded her, slyly concealing the hypocrisy and ruthlessness behind a suave façade. Their brief romance felt like a dizzying spell, blurrying what she had considered right or wrong, and so, so illusive she sometimes wondered if her mind wasn't playing tricks. It had left her in a dreamlike state, somewhere between nirvana and the harsh, cruel place some called reality.

Nathaniel Gray did not break her heart. No, no, after everything she did, she wasn't even sure she had one. You cannot break what you do not possess. He just handed her happiness and exauced dreams and lovely promises in one of those crystal vials with a pretty ribbon, and smashed the bottle right in front of her as she was reaching for it. Maybe the pain only came from the shards of glass that got stuck inside her. Or simply from the fragments of her delusions that pierced her pride.

Thinking about Nate gave her a headache. Her thoughts were swirling, scattered in her mind like wild banshees, contradicting, illogical whispers that made her delirious. And her head was spinning, spinning, the way she used to spun in his arms in one of her fancy gowns, and suddenly the idea of ever waltzing again in a ballroom suddenly felt preposterous -who would she want to dance with, now that _he _was gone?- and she allowed a tired, half-crazed laugh to escape her dry lips, though it resembled more a hoarse, pained moan. Her jailer made himself scarce, and she hadn't received water since quite a while. Then again, it could have something to do with the jug she threw against the wall a few nights ago.

Nate ignited a fire inside her she didn't even knew she possessed. For him, she would have flown to the moon and back, swam across the Thames during one of those frozen winter nights, stopped a bullet.

_Ha._

_Haha._

_Hahaha._

_AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA._

This time, she laughed for real. The loud, demented way that could make people question her sanity. The laugher of a girl broken beyond repair that didn't care how pathetic or disturbed or wrong she looked anymore.

Why should she stop the bullet if the one she had so fiercely tried to protect was the one pulling the trigger?

How pathetic she had become.

Her feverish eyes met the troubled ones of her guard, whose expression quickly shifted into one of pure disgust as he turned to walk away, like he wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the criminal. The _mental _criminal.

The voices weren't leaving. They remained next to her, stroking her face, digging in her mind, chanting morbidly some awful things that were probably going to happen to her, telling her the tales of their deaths and she couldn't, couldn't shut them and their phantom whispers out and they knew it and they stayed and they kept murmuring about their sorrows that she couldn't care less about.

Had she become worthy enough for the asylum? Or was her state simply fit for the hopeless situation she was in? After all, the thin line between sanity and madness had never been one she could perceive. You could watch it from afar, but it would dissolve soon as you came near. And she wasn't anywhere _near _it: she was sitting on the bloody thing.

And she had naively thought shewas toying Nate, while he was the one pulling the strings all long. In the big puzzle that made the world, she was enough of a saphead to think that he was the piece that could bring her what she thought was love. The disgrace of being beaten at her own game was still burned inside her mind with indelible ink. The shame was slowly consuming her, like a leech, a creeping, breathing inner demon that stubbornly refused to let go of her, and no matter how hard she attempted to swat it, it would only clutch her even more firmly, stick even closer, drain her even faster. And maybe the leech was going to stay forever. It terrified her.

But what frightened her even more was that she probably still loved Nate.

_Silly, silly girl._

For once, she agreed with the ghosts.

_Silly, silly girl. _


End file.
